Split comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

The photo is a composite of two recent exposures obtained by Hermann Boehnhardt (Universitaets-Sternwarte Muenchen - USM, Germany), and Hans Ulrich Kaeufl (ESO-Garching), using the ESO 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory (Chile) in remote observing mode from the ESO Headquarters in Garching (Germany). The observations took place on 31 January 1996, at 01:00 UT. They show that the apparent separations between the split nuclei, originally discovered at ESO on 12 December 1995, cf. ESO Press Release eso9601 and ESO Press Photo eso9601 [GIF,75k] have further increased; they are now approx. 6 and 17 arcsec, respectively. At the distance of the comet at the time of the new observations (2.5 AU = 375 million kilometres), this corresponds to projected distances of 11,000 km and 31,000 km.